


To Defend

by dancingontheedge



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Gen, Introspection, context appropriate confederate leanings, episode tag: the new nurse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:02:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingontheedge/pseuds/dancingontheedge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything has changed for Emma in the last six hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Defend

As Emma went up the stairs after apologizing to her mother, she considered her new situation. In the last six hours so little had changed on the outside, but she had felt a shift this afternoon, as though a puzzle piece had slid into place. The helpless rage she felt as those Yankee cretins overtook her home and created chaos of her well-ordered life had undergone a satisfying transformation.

She had walked into her families hotel and encountered another world. One where she could be useful. Where she would be needed. Where she could act for the cause-- no longer a helpless Southern Miss.

She had entered filled with purpose-- find Frank, her dashing beau. She had left with an altogether different one. Those Confederate boys-- her Confederate boys-- needed a defender. In the face of apathetic and negligent doctors’ and nurses’ care at the Union hospital, the injured and captured could do nothing. But she could. She could stand for them when they could not stand for themselves.

That blunt and abrasive Nurse Phinney was most adamantly not doing her best for the Confederate boys, who were clearly her lowest priority, no matter how injured. And she was Head Nurse. Those boys needed Emma, or they would scarcely be tended at all. Being needed was worth her family’s inevitable resistance. Good ladies never put themselves into a position where they might see uncovered men. But they needed her, so she would. No matter what it took.

And it would take a lot, she knew. Her crinoline had almost killed a man today. She had felt Dr. Foster’s sardonic comments to her bones and known that she would need to change to be useful. So she had asked Nurse Phinney, who clearly knew how to be respected.

She told Emma to put away childish things. It had been jarring, this serious Yankee widow informing her that the things that she had been taught symbolized womanhood were childish. She had been so excited when she was fitted with her first grown-up corset, when she had added hoops to the voluminous petticoats of girlhood. The exquisite fabric of her first ballgown, which had been as white as the day dress she had ruined today at the hotel, echoed through her memory as she opened her clothespress to examine her plainest frocks.

She would wear one tomorrow. Hopefully she would get permission from her father to go back to the hotel, and if she didn’t, she would find some way to go. She could be useful there. Help their Virginia boys, at the very least provide a friendly face and a familiarly accented voice. And she would be their advocate; their ambassador to the hospital staff that was content to ignore them.

Her boys needed her. So she would put away her childish things. There was a war for her to fight at Mansion House, and she--like the South-- would prevail.

Sitting at her vanity now, she looked her reflection in the eye. “Put away childish things.” she said aloud, resolved.


End file.
